Artemis II Is 'Fake' Theory Explained: Flat Earthers Claim NASA Moon Mission Is '100% Theatre'

Artemis II, NASA's first crewed mission around the Moon in more than half a century, is nearing its planned Pacific Ocean splashdown on Friday after a record‑breaking 252,756‑mile flight, yet prominent flat Earth activists are insisting the entire mission is '100% theatre' and that the spacecraft never left the stage.

Artemis II is the second step in NASA's Artemis programme and the first to carry humans since Apollo 17 in 1972. The four‑astronaut crew has spent 10 days in space testing systems for future Moon landings and, according to NASA, has now surpassed the distance record held by Apollo 13 since 1970. The agency has framed the mission as a proof‑of‑concept for a new era of deep‑space exploration.

Flat Earth influencers, however, are not debating the technical fine print. They are rejecting the basic premise that Artemis II is in space at all.

Flat Earthers Call Artemis II 'Theatre Since Minute One'

The loudest dismissal comes from Mark Sargent, one of the most recognisable figures in the modern flat Earth movement and a central character in Netflix's 2018 documentary Behind the Curve. Speaking to the Daily Star, Sargent said Artemis II is 'absolutely fake, 100%', repeating his claim that NASA's Artemis programme has been 'in theatres since minute one.'

He insisted the mission was 'debunked months and months before it even launched' by himself and other flat Earthers, although no verifiable technical evidence is offered to support that assertion. Instead, Sargent leaned heavily on the idea that NASA was recycling what he called 'the same production techniques' allegedly used for earlier missions and International Space Station broadcasts.

In his telling, NASA's Artemis II footage is built using 'the same camera techniques, same... green screen, blue screen stuff, chroma key,' and he argued that the quality 'hasn't even really gotten any better since about 2016, 2017 when they were doing ISS refuels.' The ISS resupply missions he referred to are routine cargo flights to the International Space Station, which has been continuously inhabited in low Earth orbit for more than two decades.

Sargent also folded Artemis II into a broader political narrative. He claimed its timing is tied to 'America 250,' the 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, describing the programme as an attempt at 'trying to establish a newfound American dominance'. That is an interpretation rather than a documented NASA policy, and NASA has not presented Artemis II as a geopolitical show of strength in those terms.

Social Media Activists Amplify Artemis II Doubts

If Sargent offered the theatrical script, online commentator Clarke Payne supplied the running commentary. Payne, who runs social media channels with thousands of followers, said he is 'leaning more towards being a flat Earther' and has recently folded Artemis II into his broader criticism of the US government and Israel.

'Just because it's NASA, that's not enough evidence for me,' he told the Daily Star. Payne questions not only Artemis II but the very shape of the planet and the legitimacy of astronauts' work. He repeatedly returns to two familiar talking points inside conspiracy circles.

First is the argument that ISS videos are staged using hidden rigging. Payne pointed to clips where an astronaut's 'hair's up in the air' and claims that in some footage a figure in the background appeared to 'come zipping through' on what he described as a 'four‑point harness.' For him and his followers, such moments are read as signs of wires or support systems, not weightlessness.

NASA has consistently denied faking ISS footage, and independent space agencies and private companies collaborate directly with the station, but Payne remains unconvinced.

The second is the so‑called Devon Island 'Mars' theory. Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic is indeed used by space agencies for field tests in harsh, Mars‑like conditions. Payne alleged that NASA Mars images 'laid perfectly together' with photographs taken on Devon Island when overlaid, implying that Mars missions are filmed on Earth.

Fact‑checkers have previously noted that many of these claimed overlays rely on edited or mislabelled images, rather than genuine one‑to‑one matches, but Payne cited them as proof that 'a lot of things that we see' cannot be trusted.

He also revisited older claims about the Van Allen radiation belts, regions of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field. In a 2014 NASA video about early Orion test flights, engineer Kelly Smith said the agency had to 'solve these challenges before we send people through this region of space.'

Conspiracy theorists routinely strip the line of its technical context and present it as an admission that Apollo never happened. Payne re‑used it to question whether Moon missions are physically possible at all.

'I guess the Artemis people, they flew through it or they figured it out,' he said, adding that he believes 'a lot of the satellites are not as high up as they say'. He described being 'left with so many questions' that he now 'really really struggle[s]' to believe mainstream spaceflight narratives.

A 'Snow Globe' Worldview Behind Artemis II Denial

Beneath the Artemis II scepticism sits a far more radical picture of reality. Sargent argued that Earth is not a planet in space, but what he calls 'a snow globe.' In this model, the world is a stationary flat disc encircled by an Antarctic 'ice wall' and sealed under an unbreakable dome or 'firmament.'

'You are literally in a sound stage,' he said. 'You're in a Hollywood backlot where everything on the ceiling is just lights. That's all you're looking at.' The Sun, Moon and stars, in this view, are not distant spheres but small lights or projections moving in circles above the disc, within the dome.

'I don't know who built this place, but it wasn't us,' Sargent added. He maintains that humanity is confined inside this cosmic container. 'All we know is we can't get out of [snow globe]. We can't bust through it.'

Payne stopped short of endorsing every element of that cosmology, but they converge on the same conclusion: that the official story of space exploration, from Apollo to Artemis II, is fundamentally untrustworthy. Payne said alleged glitches in the latest Artemis coverage 'made me question everything' and left him saying, 'I don't know what to believe anymore.' Sargent, by contrast, is certain, and describes Flat Earth as 'the most polarising thing I've ever seen.'

None of the specific staging claims about Artemis II have been independently verified, and there is no publicly available evidence that the mission is fabricated, so all such allegations remain unproven and should be treated with caution.